


White Walls

by Jadedphase



Category: The 100 (TV)
Genre: Gen, M/M, a bit angsty and bittersweet, mildly AU, takes place after season one finale
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-07-18
Updated: 2014-07-18
Packaged: 2018-02-09 10:18:57
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,579
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1979106
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Jadedphase/pseuds/Jadedphase
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>One day the voice stops asking who his friends are or what their motives might be and starts asking instead if he can recall details about them; that is the day that Monty knows they're gone.</p>
            </blockquote>





	White Walls

"Do you remember them?" 

"No, not anymore," he assures the voice from the speaker above, white noise from the white room. Everything is ivory and sterile; nothing is alive there but himself. And there are moments when he questions if he may no longer be either; that maybe he lost his grasp on life at some point without knowing that it had slipped between his fingers. 

But the voice is there to remind that he is, indeed, still breathing.

One day the voice stops asking who his friends are or what their motives might be and starts asking instead if he can recall details about them; that is the day that Monty knows they're gone. 

It has been days or weeks, he cannot tell time within the colorless box that his world has been reduced to, since he's seen Clarke across the hallway. But she must have only been moved to another room, she must be somewhere else; must be alive.  
He wants to convince himself that she'll show back up if he waits at the window, if he stares long enough. 

But she doesn't, and the voice keeps asking day by day what he still has left of them, hidden away in his weary mind and tired heart, keeps demanding to steal even that from him.  
And so he finally falls into lying, because it seems to be the only way to keep anything sacred and to covet those memories; nurture them like tiny blades of grass he can no longer see nor smell but he knows, with no doubt, grows just beyond the cold walls.

What the voice cannot take from him is guarded behind his eyes, drowned in his thoughts, beautiful and bittersweet.  
_  
His parents, a small memory for a small boy, holding him up because he cannot reach the edge of the window, showing him for the first time the mass of land and water that is the Earth below. His hands, all of six years of life to guide them, pressed to the glass and longing to reach beyond it._

_"It's your home Monty," his mother speaks softly with a wistful hint to her words, gathering him up into a hug, "It's everyone's home."_

_He believes them because she is smiling and his father, the quiet and collected man he will grow to be so much like, is nodding and staring down at the world he longs for his son to be a part of once more._

As the days turn to weeks he does forget some things, the crisp scent of the air in the morning rain and the sticky drag of mud under his shoes, but those are things Monty knows he can, will, regain once the white walls have broken down and he is once again free.

And the monotone voice on the booming speaker asks again, what does he remember; he replies only the forest of strong trees and the rivers with their cold waters.  
He keeps the people safe, the friends he refuses to give to that impassive voice, because he may by the only one left to know that once, in such a brief amount of time, they existed.  
_  
Finn, sitting at the edge of the riverbank trying to loop together string and sticks into a net that keeps falling apart each time he tries to tighten it; the frustration never showing through his quiet determination._

_"It works better like this," he offers and Finn allows him to demonstrate how to weave the thin reeds and string together into something stronger than they were as only parts waiting to be pulled together._

_An old trick, he explains when Finn asks how he knows, a game his mother taught him with bits of string when he was a child; and for a moment there is a hint of envy in his friend's eyes over that. Only brief though, because Finn seems happy enough not to live in the past, and eager to listen when Monty teaches him._

They come, now and then, to ask things of him directly. And he goes along with their want of his blood and to test him because Monty has a feeling that if he did not their use for him would be at an end, and so would he.  
The needles do not hurt anymore, he drones out their tests and instead fills his thoughts with other distractions when they open the door. 

When they leave him again to his solitude Monty sits, waiting for the voice and wondering if he may be going mad and just unaware of it.  
_  
"I'm scared."_

_Of all the words he expects to hear those might be the ones that pain him the most, urge him to draw closer in the dying firelight to the taller form at his side, to reach out and grab for a hand that shakes until he steadies it with his own grip._

_This is not his Jasper, not the brother he has always known and the partner in crime he had for so long loved; this is not the grinning bundle of eager energy he knows like he knows himself, because this stranger is only a shadow of all those things.  
This is the scarred and battered remains, the one who wakes screaming and fights to catch his breath when the ache in his chest grows too strong; the one the Earth left behind in place of his best friend. _

_But Monty only grips the shaking hand more tightly and waits out the anxious spell; for however long it may take for Jasper to truly find his way back from the dark places that hold him captive._

_His patience can outlast those demons, his will to fight for Jasper's sake only makes him stronger._

The voice has not come in days and he has begun to wonder if they have forgotten that he exists, or if the men in white even care that his life is rotting away in that tiny room. They live beyond it, in a place where there is more freedom and more color; he thinks that sooner or later they will no longer bother to see if he is even alive in his ivory tomb. 

So when the voice returns with the same questions as before Monty sighs in relief at the normality and fights back tears over the agony of knowing how much he has come to depend on the ones who press the buttons and open the doors to remind him that he is still real.  
_  
It is the memory that sustains him in the silent nights, or what he thinks must be night; a simple moment that burned into his mind and still glows brightly when he shuts his eyes to draw it forth. His lifeline; it keeps his determination to survive strong inside his exhausted body._

_His friends are there, in the eve of a long day, the first days, the short span of time before wars and riffles; an evening when they all gathered around the fire for safety and comfort._  
And he feels both, in every detail around him; Octavia's sibling bickering with Bellamy, Clarke's hopeful smile peeking around the edge of her upturned palm pressed to it while she watches the fire dance in the darkness.  
Finn is there, talking quietly to Raven, still new to that world they have only begun themselves to unlock the mystery of; she is seeing it all with the eyes they did on their early steps as well and it warms him to see her wonder. 

_Jasper is there of course, coaxing laughter from Clarke with his nonsensical humor, earning bemused looks from the rest and a nudge from him in playful chiding._

_"Quiet down or everything for miles is going to hear you," he jokes and Jasper indulges him with a roll of his eyes before he returns to the elaborate gesturing and excited tones as he continues the story he tells Clarke._

_Eventually the siblings find some peace with each other and Octavia sits next to Clarke, Bellamy perches near enough to be a part of the moment but only in watching it; Monty wishes that he knew how to draw him closer but lets it go for the time being._

_It isn't perfect but it is good enough, Monty shuts his eyes with a murmur of happiness, listening to the sounds of life all around him. Their life, together, strangers he has come to call friends, may call family before too much longer._

_His parents were right; Earth has become his home._

The walls do not care for the bonds or the people who carry the names that linger in his thoughts, the voice is there only to insist he give away that old life for the one they offer him instead.  
Lying has never been easier, playing their game to survive, because they cannot take from him what they expect to; they will never convince him to give up the past and those who may now only live within it.

Monty studies them with silence as they study him; he is frightened but is not alone while he carries those memories. That is the power he has within the white room, a power that the men in masks underestimate. 

"Do you remember them?" The voice once more asks, as it always does. 

"I don't remember anything," Monty lies, again, taking one more defiant step towards watching the white walls crumble.


End file.
